


The Devil That You Know

by CadetDru



Series: Before [4]
Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Loathing, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadetDru/pseuds/CadetDru





	The Devil That You Know

Dr. Saunders was supposed to be the angel on Adelle's shoulder, just as Topher had set himself up to be the devil. 

Dr. Saunders hated Topher with a thinly veiled intensity. He had just tried to make her not drawn to him. He thought it would hurt too much. It already did-- the Claire he knew was still there, look like she was there. 

Topher refused to believe in anything as pedestrian as a soul. Claire, the Claire that he knew, the Claire he refused to think of as his, that person was gone and locked away. This new person, she wasn't a stranger. Topher knew her, better than he had ever known anyone. He knew things about her she didn't. She was his greatest work. But she was coming up with new likes and dislikes, all on her own. She was adding into his programming. 

There had been Normal!Claire, and that was great. There had been Schizo!Claire, and that hurt him in what heart he had. There was Whiskey!Claire, and that stabbed in his heart at 90 degrees to the Schizo!Claire. Then there was Saunders!Claire and that was another 45 degree angle in. Everything about him, she despised. Things that were fundamental to Claire, the original, the real, the basis for all these copies... she hated those things reflected in him. 

She despised him.   
He loved her, in the way he always had. Philia, not Eros.   
He was never going to be able to fix her. Every promise he had made her meant nothing now.   
Did she know, somehow? Know how badly he had let her down? Know that he'd whored her out, gotten her cut up like that... Know that he was now thinking of her like some mindless piece of meat because that's what he'd turned her into?


End file.
